


Factory Recall

by sbuggbot



Series: Voltbot Armilly [5]
Category: SteamWorld Quest (Video Game)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, Hive Mind, Suspense, Tags to be updated as author remembers, Voltbot Armilly, many feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-11-02 01:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20572013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbuggbot/pseuds/sbuggbot
Summary: Your origins are hard to escape at times....Armilly's sparring with Tarah when an unfriendly and strange-looking robot shows up. Scariest part was, it didn't seem to be totally foreign to Armilly.





	1. Déjà Vu? or Something Worse?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for another Voltbot Armilly fic because I was struck with inspiration. I highly recommend reading the other stories in this series first to have a better understanding of what's going on. "Behind the Plating" and "Tearing Wires" in particular.

Tarah was sparring/training/play-fighting against Armilly. They needed something to do while Copernica and Thayne worked together and practiced their magic. Alchemy and Arcana were practically polar opposites when it came to magic: mixing them together willy-nilly and without much thought usually led to things getting loud and explodey.

While the process was very entertaining and fascinating for the magic users involved, there were times it got boring for onlookers. And Armilly and boredom usually didn’t mix very well, so she and Tarah wandered off to practice with their own weapons.

“Watch this, Tarah!” Armilly said with a twinkle in her eye. She started to move but noticed an unfocused look to Tarah's expression. "Are you watching?" she asked. 

"Armilly…" Tarah pointed behind where Armilly was standing. "What's that?"

Confused, Armilly looked over her shoulder. Her heart leaped into her throat, then almost immediately dropped to the pit of her boiler, splashing all her insides. There was a strange-looking robot behind her, slightly larger than she was but no bigger than Galleo. It was no ordinary steambot by any stretch of the meaning--it had glowing wires poking out of its armor and multiple red eyes in place of a normal face. Not anything any steambot would expect to see within a normal (or even adventurous) lifetime.

It still looked hauntingly familiar to Armilly, though.

She spun around to properly face the robot and planted her feet on the ground, straightening her posture and trying to look as intimidating as she could. "Stay back, Tarah," she said, sounding way more tense than she ever did normally. "If something happens, _ run._"

She had no clue what was happening, why this robot was scaring Armilly so _badly_. "What?" 

The strange robot began speaking in a language Tarah did not understand. Armilly understood it, though. It only unsettled her even more; she was shaking in her armor now. "N. No… I won't let that happen." She avoided charging at it directly but held her sword high to show that she meant business. “Go. ** _Away_**!” she growled, an odd buzzing overlaying her voice.

In response, the robot charged a coil and sent out an energy pulse. But it was a weird one: Tarah felt a weird tingling but was otherwise unaffected. The moment it hit Armilly, however, she crumpled and hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. She didn’t get up. Only then did the strange robot begin to move closer to Armilly.

“Scrap...” was the only reaction Tarah could muster at first. But she snapped out of her shock quickly; when she was younger, standing around in shock was almost always a fatal mistake. “Hey, you leave her alone, jerk!” She charged at the strange robot, holding her axe tight in her grip. 

Tarah wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but as soon as she was within an arm’s reach of the strange robot, she found herself dangling off the ground and with no axe in her hands. The robot had her by the collar. She squirmed and kicked but she couldn’t do anything to it the way she was being held. 

“WE ARE VECTRON. RESISTING OUR FORCES IS FUTILE.”

Not getting anywhere, Tarah suddenly froze on some buried and repressed instinct. She couldn’t breathe. It was the exact opposite of what she had wanted to do, but her body was not listening to her. Her vision went blurry. She honestly could not tell if her heart-pump was going very slowly right now or so fast that she couldn’t feel most of the pulses.

Then Tarah screamed, much like a frightened prey animal. Unbeknownst to her, small purple swirls of arcane energy appeared around her as she did so. Tarah didn’t have a handle on arcane energy herself, but she did share a linked spark with her twin...

The robot dropped Tarah as if she had burst into flames. Instead of puzzling over Tarah’s reaction, it left her gasping and shuddering on the ground and switched its focus to Armilly. She was still out and would be for a while longer, as calculated. Vectron had factored in ample time to deal with any resistances into its calculations, retrieval could continue as planned. 

Satisfied as it could be in a hive mind, the voltbot grabbed Armilly by the leg and dragged her off. 

The world stopped spinning enough for Tarah to watch Armilly get taken away, but not enough for her to follow, frustratingly enough. Not enough steam pressure in her. She could think clearly enough now to realize that her pump had slowed down earlier. Maybe to make her seem dead? It was an instinct she didn’t really understand and very annoying. She couldn’t chase Armilly like this…

She heard distant footsteps approaching from the way she and Armilly came earlier--farther away than most bots could hear. Tarah let her head fall, unable to do anything else while her systems recovered from such a nasty shock. There was no way she would have been able to get Armilly back by herself anyway. She'd have to get help once she could stand up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is kinda outside of what I normally do but this is the only chapter I've written so far (I do have an outline though, I'm not totally feral).


	2. Shook

“Perhaps you can make the ice boil?” Orik asked with a smirk.

“That is not how that works and you know it,” Copernica said. “Even if Arcana does do strange things.”

A little while after Tarah and Armilly wandered off, Orik found Copernica and Thayne practicing and was curious enough to watch. He had dabbled in bits of both practices of magic in the past, so seeing Copernica and Thayne attempt to combine them was plenty to hold his attention. Galleo showed up a while after he did and lingered around too.

Then, there was a distant, terrified scream. Thayne dropped his dagger and swore that the steam in his tubes turned to ice. Orik was convinced that his heart stopped.

“Was that Tarah?” Galleo asked, paused in the middle of scratching Benji’s head.

A silent, horrified nod from Thayne was all confirmation that was needed. They needed to investigate. 

“Milly and Tarah went that way when they got bored earlier.” Copernica pointed down the path.

With that, the party of four ran off towards the field with hardly another word between them. They all knew the way anyway. As they got closer, Thayne stowed his dagger and began running on all fours. “Tarah?” he called.

A breathless, strained “Over here.” came from the taller grass off to the side. Thayne got there first, and it didn’t take long for him to find her in there. She hadn’t gone very far into the grass patch.

“Sis! Are you hurt?” Thayne asked. He didn’t see any injuries on her, but she still looked badly upset.

Tarah shook her head. “J-just…” She couldn’t make herself say the word “scared”. Or any synonym of it. She was grateful that Thayne understood her well enough to tell.

As the others caught up with him, Thayne pulled Tarah into a tight hug. She was shaking like a leaf, and not in the way the bad gear between her shoulders made her judder (although she was also juddering harder than normal, but that always happened when she was stressed enough).

Orik knelt down next to the grass patch. “Tarah, what happened? Are you okay?”

“Where’s Armilly?” Copernica asked as she looked across the field.

“S-some weird robot came here aand took her,” Tarah said. Great, now she was stuttering. “I-I think it w-was a robot. Looked wrong. It knocked her oout and dragged her away. I tried to-to stop it but it grabbed me--" she shuddered. "Couldn't chase it…too dizzy…" Which led to her hiding herself as best she could until she could calm down.

Thayne hugged her tighter in an attempt to get her to stop shaking so hard while Orik scooted closer to comfort her. “A strange robot?” Orik asked in hopes that Tarah would be able to elaborate.

Tarah nodded. Leaning on Orik and hugging Thayne was helping her tremors, it seemed. She recounted how it had the strange wires and multiple red eyes, it talking to Armilly in a weird language and Armilly seeming to understand it, and how that energy blast barely affected Tarah while knocking Armilly out.

“Maybe it was from the place Armilly came from, then? She called it something…”

“Vectron,” Copernica said. “That’s the thing that tried to take over Armilly’s mind that one time…” She held her book closer and started biting her knuckle as her mind dredged up the images from that incident.

Galleo grimaced. "It still really wants her back, huh?" He put a comforting hand on Copernica's shoulder. Aside from Armilly herself, Copernica had been left the most shaken.

She sucked in a breath she didn't realize she had been holding off. "We gotta find her."

"If we want to catch up with that robot, we need to hurry."

As they prepared to leave, Tarah staggered and would have fallen had Thayne not caught her. 

“Are you sure that blast didn’t affect you?” Galleo asked. “You still look really shaky.”

"I'm-I'm--" she lost her footing before she could say she was fine. "Uhhh." She still felt really off.

"You had quite the scare there, not to mention you were basically alone," Orik said. He couldn't hide a concerned frown from them. That amount of stress could have easily reached a point higher than Tarah's heart could handle... especially without her brother there.

"Survival instincts can take their toll on you, you need some more time to rest…"

"Time we don't have," Copernica added, shifting on her feet. Every second they waited, Coperncia was falling deeper into a nervous loop.

"Maybe not time to sit around, but…" He held out an arm and looked down at Tarah. "Is it alright if I carry you?"

"Yeah…" Tarah nodded and held up her arms, to Orik's mild surprise. Tarah usually wasn't one to be carried.

Orik knelt down and let Tarah climb onto his hip. It was a cooperative effort to pick her up since he only had use of one arm, but once she was in place he had little issue. As he stood back up, Tarah settled against him contentedly. She was enjoying being held like this more than she expected...

"Tarah, did you catch which way that bot went?"

She lifted her head a bit and pointed. "That way."

"Vectron's that way," Thayne noted.

"Do we really wanna go back there?" Galleo asked, unsure. Everyone had been creeped out by the place last time they went, even before Armilly had started behaving erratically.

"If we don't, Armilly could die!" Copernica snapped. Then, her angry expression broke down into fear. "Or worse…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't seem to just let a WIP sit, I gotta dedicate all my waking hours to it, it seems.


	3. Oh no!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How did this get so frikin long?

It took them longer to get to Vectron than Copernica liked. They never did catch up with the voltbot that had Armilly--in fact, following its trail led to a strange metal plate on the ground. A teleporter, one that worked differently than the ones at the Alchemy College. None of them could figure out how to turn it on, so they had to go the long way instead. 

If there was one positive to going the long way, it gave Tarah enough time to recover and get her nerves back in order after being scared half to death earlier. She  _ might _ have stayed in Orik's hold longer than she  _ really _ needed to, though. (Not that he minded.) 

Vectron was cold. Not quite like the cold of the Darkfrost Mountains, but it was still a cold that had a way of creeping into your joints without freezing them.

"Yup. Just as creepy as I remember," Galleo said. Benji had retreated to the warmth and comfort of Galleo's pocket. "Do we have a plan for finding Armilly or anything?"

Copernica stopped in her tracks. She had forgotten that part. "Um...no." This was embarrassing, she was usually more rational and strategic than this.

"Then what, are we just going to hope we trip over her or something?"

She stamped her foot at him and shouted. " _ I DON'T KNOW! _ " There was a moment of dead silence after that, the only sound being her voice echoing down the halls. She didn't need the other four's shocked expressions to realize what she had done. She hid her face in her hands. "I-I'm sorry, I just…" She didn't know what to do and it scared her. 

Galleo hugged her a moment later. "I hate it here too, but Armilly needs us."

Not looking up at him, Copernica quietly nodded in agreement. Sure, they all annoyed each other at times, but they’d stand together until the very end.

"We'll figure something out," Orik said. "We've managed to work things out before."

Sticking close together now for warmth and strength in numbers, the group continued onwards. 

Tarah pointed down an offshoot of the main hallway as they passed by. "There she is!"

Indeed, Armilly was standing like a statue and seemed to be looking at a panel on the wall. There was some sort of box with an antenna attached to her back, on the spot she had clawed up that one time. She looked over at them. Her visor was down, even though she didn't look very on guard. She had her sword, out, sure, but she wasn't holding it up or anything.

She turned to face them. Every movement was too stiff, too calculated. Normally, she was always moving, even when she was standing in one spot. Seeing her so still was unnatural.

Copernica was the only one who stepped closer to her. "Milly?"

She caught a glimpse of Armilly's eye through the slits on her visor. Her pupil was wavering and shrunk in terror. Then she noticed that Armilly wasn't standing completely still; she was trembling a tiny bit.

"Coco,  _ run," _ Armilly croaked in a hoarse whisper. The light in her eye winked out and Armilly lunged.

Before Copernica could properly grasp what was going on, Galleo picked her up and used his other shoulder to block Armilly's attack in one motion before running away. Thayne stayed back to stun her before joining the others in fleeing.

They all ducked and hid away in an alcove--the same one they had hidden in during their last visit, too. Unlike last time, their forces were one fewer. Galleo set Copernica down and leaned against the wall, shaking. Meanwhile, Orik sank down into the chair and immediately had two children sitting in his lap.

Copernica realized that she was standing in something wet. She could hear a dripping sound over everyone else’s breathing, too.

_ Plip. Plip. _

It didn’t take her long to find the source of the dripping. "Galleo, you're bleeding!"

He looked himself over and jumped. "Scrap, I am." Blocking a sword with your shoulder led to getting a large gash on it, especially when you don't have any extra armor on it aside from your normal plating.

"You didn't notice?" Tarah asked, incredulous.

"I was a little busy running for my life…" He couldn’t ignore now that it was brought to his attention, though. His head was spinning. “Should probably sit down now…”

“That’s what healing magic is for, isn’t it?” Tarah asked.

“Not by itself with a wound this big,” Orik said. He put a hand to his own shoulder. “Trust me, I know. We have to at least get the bleeding to stop first.” He gently nudged the twins off his lap and began trying to fix Galleo’s shoulder manually.

Remembering what she’d do in battle, Copernica put up a mana barrier around Galleo. It’d give them a buffer to keep Galleo from bleeding out. “This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t stood there…”

“But you didn’t get sliced in two,” Galleo said, “and that’s what I was worried about, not my shoulder.”

Copernica dropped her shoulders and sighed. “Just...I’d be upset if something happened to you, even if it was to protect me.” The fact that Armilly was missing and in danger was hard enough for her to handle...

“I’d probably miss you, too.” 

“Galleo,” Orik muttered a moment later, “You need to stop squirming so much; you’re making the bleeding worse.”

He sat as still as he could manage. “Sorry.” 

Tarah was sitting next to Orik and watching him try to fix up Galleo’s shoulder. “Why don’t you just…” she reached over and tweaked a part. The bleeding stopped. “...do that?”

Orik blinked. “That works too. Where did you learn how to do that?”

“Uh, experience?” Tarah said. Thayne nodded; they’d learned how to fix a lot of different things on the fly.

Orik grimaced at the reminder of how rough Tarah and Thayne’s past was.  _ All you can do is make it easier for them now, _ he reminded himself. “I’d be careful with that arm, Galleo. You don’t want this to get any worse than it is... ” It was already going to leave a scar at this point, more than likely.

Something grabbed the twins’ attention and they were suddenly at the door, looking out closely. 

“Wha--”

Before Copernica could even finish talking, Thayne shot a look back at them. “Shhh!” It was so sudden and forceful coming from him that it shocked the others into silence. Then he was watching the hallway again.

A moment later, the other three could finally hear what the twins heard. Footsteps, strange-sounding ones. The footsteps picked up even more and Tarah cursed under her breath. "It sees the trail we left!" A voltbot, one different from the unit that had taken Armilly, appeared in the doorway.

Thayne shouted and sent an arcane burst at the voltbot. It wasn’t that strong of one, all things considered, but it still knocked it down and broke it.

“Whoa, dude!” his sister cried.

“Did I just do that?” Thayne mumbled. That was not the effect he had been expecting, but one he’d accept.

“Hive minds are affected by Arcana, okay then.”

“To be fair, Arcana users are usually affected by Arcana, too,” Orik said. It wasn’t an easy discipline to master at all, even dangerous at times: he himself couldn’t do much Arcane magic without hurting himself. “Thayne and Tarah are a rare exception from what I’ve seen. But still, something good to know.”

“But we might hurt Armilly…”

“I don’t think it affects her like that,” Thayne said. “I uh, hit her with a spell one time while I was confused…”

“She’s still part steambot, that might be enough to protect her,” Galleo said. He paused. “I saw a box on Armilly’s back earlier. I think it might be a replacement for the part I broke last time…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bREAK THE GOOBER


	4. Blast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo I pretty much wound up finishing this story yesterday. Seems like I cant focus on anything else when I've got a WIP going.

They’d rested and recovered as much as they could--they didn’t have a lot of time right now. Armilly needed their help. At least Galleo’s wound was set now. Not healed, but stabilized and not at risk of starting to bleed again. Good enough for now. Hopefully. 

“Come on already, Armilly isn’t going to save herself!” Tarah hollered, her axe dragging behind her. She skidded to a halt a few seconds later and nearly got knocked over by Thayne.

“I’m coming!--whoa.”

“That is a lot of voltbots.” More than anybody had seen before, but not anything they couldn’t handle. The party braced themselves for a fight.

It was still a lot of voltbots though; they all wound up at at least a little bit separated from each other aside from Tarah and Thayne’s uncanny ability to stick at each other’s sides.

Armilly slipped into Galleo’s view. It wasn’t for very long, but it was long enough for him to smack the box on her back with his wrench. She didn’t seem to notice the blow and was gone before he could do anything else. He cursed his hurt arm limiting his abilities. At least the device looked a lot looser now...

Thayne’s voice came through oddly clearly through the chaos. “Coco! Dad! I have an idea, get over here!” 

Both of them were relatively close; it didn’t take long for them to find him. “What is it?” Orik asked, too busy to even register the fact that Thayne had called him Dad.

“We’re all good with magic---” he stopped to jab at a voltbot that got too close “---maybe we can cast a big spell together!”

“Probably our best option at this point. Have either of you done a three-way cast before?”

A voltbot got way too close to Copernica’s face and ate book for its efforts. “Studied it in college; didn’t get to practice.”

“We stand with our backs together,” Thayne said. “I’ll lead; it isn’t very different from tag teaming with one person.”

They locked clamps and faced outwards towards the field of foes. 

“One..two...three!” They squeezed each other’s hands and for a moment, their energies were one as they sent out a blast of arcane energy, one big enough it knocked over the voltbots closest to them.

Tarah and Galleo ducked as the wave went over them. It didn’t hurt either of them, fortunately. For a moment, all anyone could see was purple. Within seven seconds, it was over.

Copernica bent over and broke down into a coughing fit. Using arcane magic was so different compared to alchemy; it was a nasty shock to her system. She’d boosted one of Thayne’s attacks before, but actually casting the spell herself felt totally different. It felt like someone had poured ice into her bellows after ripping the air out.

Orik put his hand on her back, ignoring the twinges and pains in his own joints. Tomorrow was not going to be pleasant for him. “Easy, easy…you should probably sit.”

“I’m sorry Copernica, I didn’t realize it’d hurt you that much…” Thayne looked away and let his ears droop guiltily.

“It’s--it’s fine,” she choked out. Another harsh cough. “I wasn’t being-- _ ghk _ \--very careful.”

There was a grunt and the sound of an axe hitting something. “I think that’s all of them,” Tarah said.

There was a moment of stillness. Everyone looked around. Not a single voltbot was left standing, and there was a sort of quiet to the whole area, like some background noise had been switched off. Something else was missing, though.

“Where’s Armilly?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goober has been broken but where's Armilly?


	5. Restoration

Armilly was confused, alone, and in a lot of pain. What had happened…? The last thing she clearly remembered was sparring with Tarah; everything else up until a few minutes ago was a jumbled mess. She didn’t know where she was.

_ Vectron. _

She had to get out of here.

Armilly scrambled to her feet, ignoring how much it hurt to move. She could rest later, she had to escape. She wasn’t safe here, Vectron could take her back again----wait.

_ Again? _

So her memories weren’t totally gone. They’d start trickling back soon as her mind sorted them out. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not yet. No time to think about that now, she had to  _ leave _ .

Armilly hardly had to think about where she was going as she ran; it was like the layout of this place was etched into her brain. At least she knew the way out. 

She found the exit of the cave and ran outside. Almost dusk. Her first impulse was to flop down onto the grass and look up at the sky. So she did. Armilly regretted it a moment later when the impact made her shoulders sting in pain. Was this what Galleo felt whenever he bashed his pipe on something, she wondered?

Where was she? Where was home? Home was safe, right? But how would she get there? She knew that she knew the way, but she couldn’t remember it right now. She sat up and looked around. It didn’t help her get her bearing any better.

The trees. The trees, she’d be safe amongst the trees. The trees would protect her. The trees were a shield from the wide open. She got up and ran over to the trees.

Armilly tried to climb one of the trees, but her shaky, exhausted limbs weren’t having it and she fell on her butt. Even on the ground, she still felt safer than she did out in the open. Especially so close to Vectron…

She wanted a drink. Evidently Vectron forgot that she ran off of steam. There’s a stream, streams had water, good enough for now. Drink break.

Too fast, it came right back up. Ugh, maybe later. She still had reserves.

The pain in her body outweighed her desire to keep moving, and Armilly plopped down onto the ground. Maybe she could just rest for a while…

Her head dipped as her mind shifted to unscrambling the memories that were clogging it up.

* * *

They found the box that was stuck to Armilly’s back on the ground partway down the hallway they entered from. Still no Armilly, but there were her footprints leading back outside. And some bled fluids that weren’t from Galleo earlier. That trail tapered off as they got closer to the exit, so it seemed she wasn’t bleeding severely.

One less problem to worry about, then. Between Copernica’s cough (which had stuck around after casting that spell earlier), Galleo’s shoulder wound, and other various dings and dents, everyone was tired enough as it was.

Calling for her didn’t elicit any response they could hear, but the twins tracking footprints took them over to the woodsy area. 

“There you are, Milly!” Copernica said. Her voice was scratchy, but what was she going to do?

Armilly made a strangled croak in surprise and jumped to her feet, shaking. She put a hand to her throat in surprise. Her voicebox wasn’t working right, apparently. She had such a fearful look to her eyes, it was hard to tell how lucid she was.

“Armilly, it’s me...I’m Copernica, do you remember?”

A pause, then Armilly slowly nodded. Good, she did remember. 

Copernica took a step closer, but Armilly only backed away. “It’s alright, I’m not going to hurt you. None of us are. You’re safe now.”

Armilly backed up more and pressed herself against the tree, shaking her head. 

Seeing that Armilly wanted space, Copernica stopped. “You’re not safe?”

Another head shake, and Armilly gestured at Copernica and the others.

Copernica was confused by this. “We’re not safe?” 

She nodded. 

“Not safe from what? Vectron’s gone, we destroyed the place.”

Armilly looked down at her feet. After a moment, she pointed to herself.

_ “Oh.” _ Of course she’d think she was a danger; she had her body taken over and used as a puppet in a hive mind. One hellbent on destroying all of steam-kind, no less. “Well... I don’t think you’re a danger.”

No response to that; Armilly just kept staring at her feet.

Copernica sat down on the ground, followed by her friends. Galleo piped up. “We broke the thingy that Vectron put on you, yeah? It can’t get in your head now.”

Armilly sat down and hugged her knees to her chest. Galleo was right and she knew it, but… they’d thought the same thing the first time they went to Vectron, when he destroyed the receiver that was built into her back. What would stop it from taking her again, putting a replacement receiver on her back again? She started rocking a little bit, grimacing when her raw back hit the tree trunk.

“Are you hurt?” Orik asked. 

He got an odd look in response, one that screamed, “Did you really just ask that?” 

“Physically, I mean.”

Yet another pause while she thought, then she nodded and pointed to her back with her thumb. She uncurled enough that everyone could see scorch marks all over her body, ones from something electrical.

“Jeez… what did they do to you?” Galleo asked, scooting closer.

Armilly scratched her head and then shrugged. She was still figuring that out. She jumped away when Galleo got too close to her. Tarah got a good view of the mangled plating on Armilly’s back and cringed.

Seeing Tarah’s expression, Orik said, “I know you don’t really want to be touched right now, Armilly, but we really need to at least cover up your back. You don’t want dirt getting in there.”

She sighed in defeat and turned her back to Orik so he could deal with it. Maybe it'd stop hurting as much, too…

He was sure to tell her each step he was doing as he did it; that way she wouldn’t get startled too much. Removing the larger objects that were stuck in there, then using a spell to clean it since there was some dirt in it already. “Alright, it should be clean now. Galleo, I need the gauze from the repair kit.”

“For cog’s sake, I’m going to have to restock this when we get back,” Galleo muttered. “Here, gauze,” he said as he passed it over to Orik. 

Armilly’s eyes fell on Galleo’s shoulder. You could practically see the gears turning in her head as memories fell into place and she realized what had happened to it. Her mouth agape, she traced over the wound and then pointed to herself.

“That wasn’t you who did that, Armilly.”

She picked up her sword, pointed at it, then at Galleo’s shoulder, and finally herself again to prove her point.

“You weren’t yourself though, Vectron was controlling your every move. I’m not mad at you and it isn’t even your fault.”

Defeated, Armilly put her sword back down. His words did little to ease the guilty look on her face, though… but she hadn't attacked anyone since she left the cave, so maybe it was alright for her friends to be around her.

Not long after, Orik finished dressing Armilly's back. "Armilly, I know that you're upset right now and don't want to deal with people, but we need to find a town soon. It's getting late, and we need a mechanic."

Armilly jumped away and shook her head. No mechanics, she hated visiting the mechanic. The only one she'd tolerate visiting was the one she had seen since she was a kid, and he was all the way back in Goosebucket. And Goosebucket was too far away to reach tonight.

"Maybe you can wait until we can make it home, but Galleo needs someone to patch up his arm soon." He shifted and changed the way he was sitting on the ground. "Besides, I wouldn't be able to move in the morning if I slept on the ground tonight..."

She still looked rather dubious about the idea. Copernica reached over and patted her shoulder. "We can wait a little while longer, but we need to get going within the next hour, okay?"

Armilly nodded, still uneasy but glad she didn't have to go  _ right now. _ Copernica started coughing again, prompting a concerned grunting noise from Armilly.

"As it turns out, Alchemists and Arcana don't exactly mix," Tarah said. Thayne looked away and nodded quietly. His idea had worked very well and had probably saved them all, but he still felt bad for putting that much strain on the others. 

"It was still really cool to watch, though."

"Yes, I'm proud of you for helping us do that, Thayne." Orik said with a little smile. Thayne's face lit up with the most precious smile known to steamkind.

Copernica moved so she was sitting across from Armilly. She was still upset, but accepting the others being near her now. Carefully, she took Armilly’s hands into her own.

_ “The alchemist reassured the knight that it was all over now, we’re all safe. She can rest now.” _

Armilly dropped Copernica’s hands and pulled her into a tight hug. Her body was wracked with silent sobs. Narrating things aloud helped her process what was going on; she had been so stressed and on guard that she forgot to do it this time. The fact her voicebox wasn't working right did not help. Through her metaphorical tears, she whispered a hoarse  _ “Thank you.” _

Copernica patted her head and hugged her back as gently as she could. "I'm so glad you're still here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yaaay! :)


	6. Slowly Recovering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWO WEEKS LATER... The author has a surprise even for herself.
> 
> I decide to write another chapter because I wanted to.

"Did something happen to your voice?" While Armilly was willing to talk now, her voice still sounded off and she avoided speaking more than she needed to.

"I think so, I don't remember," Armilly said. There were at least a couple ways it could have happened and she didn't want to think about it. "Hurts a little."

"Well, there's no need for you to talk if you don't want to."

Even for an exhausted and injured party, the walk to a nearby town wasn't insurmountable. They were almost there, now. Aside from a moment where Orik's knee stuck, making him trip and hit his bad arm on the ground, the walk wasn't very eventful. He was quick to reassure everyone that he was just tired and needed to rest once they got there.

First stop was a mechanic qualified for major repairs; Galleo needed a more permanent fix to his shoulder. Everyone else aside from Armilly (who didn't want to be seen and hid in the water closet until the repairbot left) received a cursory check-over, with the repairbot deciding to do a more in depth check on Copernica. She was still dealing with the shock to her system from earlier; the doctor was a bit concerned. That entailed taking her back where his equipment was, but it wasn't going to be very long.

That left Orik and two tired bun-children flopped on the seats in the waiting room. Tarah decided to use Orik's thigh as a pillow and fell asleep almost immediately. They were soon joined by Armilly, but rather than sit in one of the seats, she opted to sit on the floor. Being curled up with her back to the wall made her feel safer.

The nurse came back in to update them and paused. "Is...are they okay?" She asked, noticing Armilly's disturbed demeanor and the marks all over her. Armilly looked up at the nurse, not bothering to lift her visor up.

"She's had a rough day and isn't up to very much," Orik said. "Also, she has bad anxiety about visiting unfamiliar doctors."

The nurse crouched down in front of Armilly, the latter pushing her visor back up but not meeting the nurse's eyes. "Your friend's getting patched up right now, do you need anything looked at?"

Armilly shook her head and hoarsely said no. All of her injuries could wait. 

"Can we get you anything while you wait? Some water, or something else?"

A pause while she thought. "Water's good," she mumbled.

"Alright," the nurse said. She stood back up. "Your other friend should be back soon."

"Is she okay?" Thayne interjected. His worry superseded his shyness.

The nurse nodded. "She's okay, but she needs to rest some."

"That's good to hear, I know Arcana is a shock to someone who's only practiced Alchemy," Orik said.  
  


As everyone knows, a rest at an inn fixes everything.

Well, it helps, at least.

It gives a group of friends (even family in a way) a chance to rest after a very long afternoon of basically going full-steam.

Copernica blearily woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of thrashing. It was Armilly in the other bed, caught in the throes of a nightmare, it seemed. She called out her name in hopes of waking her up. "Milly?"

Armilly didn't seem to hear her and began reaching for her back while whining and still kicking.

Coco jumped out of her own bed and moved closer, ignoring the way her head spun from standing up so suddenly. "Armilly, stop clawing at your bandages!" Copernica managed to find the blurry figure that was Armilly's arm and grabbed it before it did more damage. "Shhh, you're safe now, it's okay…"

Armilly jolted awake and yanked her arm out of Copernica's hold before she realized what was going on. Reality slowly faded back in: she wasn't kidnapped anymore, she wasn't stuck in restraints that seemed to burn her metal, Vectron was not putting a transmitter on her back and turning her back into its toy.

"Are you okay?" Copernica asked.

Armilly groaned; her everything hurt. Her back itched, all of her burns were stinging, her head ached...that wasn't even going into how she felt mentally.

"Yeah, it's been a rough day, but it's over now, at least. We made it."

"I got everyone hurt, though!" She croaked. "Tarah almost went into shock, I-I sliced Galleo's shoulder open, and now you're probably getting a cold!"

"Milly…" Copernica began. " _ None _ of what happened is your fault. It was all Vectron's doing, you can't control what it does any more than we can." She stopped to cough harshly. "And Orik and I decided to cast and help Thayne on our own, you had nothing to do with that."

"It wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for me…"

"Well….what if…" This was going to sound absurd. "What if Hyapathia had put a mind control spell on me and made me hurt you guys? Would you be mad at me then?"

"Noo!" Armilly gasped. "You'd never hurt us on purpose…"

"See? We all think the same way about you, even Galleo." Something occurred to Copernica. "Besides, you warned us all before it happened, it gave us all time to react. It would've been so much worse if you hadn't told me to run."

Armilly shuddered as her mind filled with mental images of her splitting Copernica's head open while not in control of her body. There was no way she would have survived that…

Seeing the horrified and sickened look on Armilly's face, Copernica put her hands on her shoulders and said, "Okay, okay, try not to focus on that!" As soon as she said that she remembered that Armilly's mind wasn't very cooperative with her in that manner. "L-look, my point was that you were fighting Vectron and trying to warn us whenever you could.  _ That's _ the real Armilly, not the mindless puppet Vectron wanted."

Armilly listened but still wasn't sure of herself…she did feel a little better about it, though. These sorts of things take time to recover from. "Can I have a hug…?"

Copernica nodded and hugged her. Then almost got her gears squeezed out of her when Armilly hugged her back. "Ghk--!" 

Armilly sheepishly let her go once Copernica started coughing again, hard. "Sorry."

"It-it's okay," she said between coughs, one forceful enough to bring up...some weird wad of gunk. "Don't panic, the repairbot said I might cough up crud." She got rid of it and said, "We should try to get some more sleep."

Armilly grunted and flopped back onto her bed. Then she remembered something. "It's kinda like that time we met and I was sick," she said.

"It is," Copernica said with a giggle. "Don't try to take my book and cast an ice spell, though. I'm lucky I didn't freeze my boiler over that one time…"

"I'm too tiiired," Armilly said. "I'll wake up Galleo if you start burning up."

"Mmkay, night."

"G'night."


End file.
